Tag Archives: blues

I stated earlier that one of the things that I enjoy is listening and playing music. So it is natural that I would want to incorporate it into my blog. The picture at the header seemed like a great way to do this. At first I went with one of the stock photos for my theme–an old record player. It was a fantastic picture, but I felt that it didn’t quite fit the essence of my subject, nor was it personal enough.

I decided to post a picture that was somehow evocative of the blues. There are two reasons why I wanted to represent the blues. The first is pretty obvious. If you ask the average person which genre of music most personifies depression, I would bet nearly 100% would say the blues. The other reason is that it seems to me that no other type of music has had such a profound influence on modern popular styles. The blues can lay a legitimate claim to being one of the progenitors of Jazz, Country, Rock & Roll, R&B, and Rap.

What you now see at the top of the screen is what I was able to come up with. Unfortunately the space that I was able to work with didn’t quite catch the full essence of the photo. Here it is:

It looks like that hat and guitar could have belonged to Robert Johnson himself. Actually, however, this is an example of another hobby of mine: photography. The fedora and guitar in the picture actually belong to me. The hat is from Cabelas and the guitar is from Takamine , both of which were founded long after the early history of the blues. I had an idea of how I wanted to position them in the picture. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find our camera (turns out it was in Lovely Wife’s purse). So all I had to work with was my cell phone camera. At first I wasn’t too impressed with what I was able to come up with. The resolution and lighting just didn’t seem to work, along with the red background from my man cave (basement) wall. However, after a few simple photo editing tweaks, this is what I came up with. The gritty quality and the sepia tones actually are quite appropriate for what I was wanting to convey. I think that I am going to have a framed print made to hang in the man cave.

I hope to share more of my photos in the future. I actually ordered a new camera this week and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.